What Is Viral Content?

Viral content is any piece of media that suddenly becomes an
online
sensation. You have almost certainly seen this happen — that
indelible image or outrageous video that gets forwarded to you by a
dozen friends in under an hour. The democratic structure of
the
Web has made this sort of thing commonplace nowadays, as a single text,
tweet, status update, or link is all it takes to "gift" something
amazing to everyone you know.

So yes, we have all seen bulldogs on skateboards and sneezing
pandas. But what does this have to do with growing your
business?

The Viral Vanguard

Quite a bit. Viral media is without question the
single
fastest way to vault your site to the top of the search engines.
We have already established that inbound
links are the most
important factor in determining your search rank. The conventional way
to earn those links is to slowly aggregate content that attracts
attention and interest. This works extremely well and makes
sense
for most online companies, but there is also another speed available if
you can strike gold. A perfect piece of content or media can
easily net your website millions of inbound links in a matter of days.
Think of it as lighting the afterburners on your SEO
link-building efforts.

And there is another important benefit to SEO
viral content
besides that mammoth spike in rankings. Viral content goes
viral
in the first place because it is, by definition, incredibly compelling.
The material is so good, so unique and worthy, in other
words, that people
actually feel compelled to recommend it across social sites like
Twitter and Facebook. If you are the creator of this content,
you
stand to benefit from all that reflected starlight, grabbing thousands
of enthusiastic new fans overnight.

So what could go wrong?

Viral Done Right

Well, two things. You could fail — that is, spend
days, weeks
or months creating something that barely makes a ripple. Or
you
could succeed, but at the cost of obscuring your core business.
Maybe you have produced the perfect viral video of cats on a
roller coaster. If your specialty is cosmetic surgery, what's
the
point?

This is where an experienced viral SEO content specialist is
needed.
Effective viral content is an art form. You want
something
that is both memorable AND that speaks to your company's brand,
something that captures the zeitgeist of the day AND addresses the
demographic you need. Like everything else in the world of
SEO,
viral content is creative work that requires a particular mix of
energy, experience and imagination.

It is a tricky balance. Ad agencies get it wrong all
the time.
Movie studios get it wrong all the time. Sometimes
we get
it wrong too. But we're really, really good at it.